escaped the newness of his old land

(into the bright history of mothercountry
perspectives now fixed and horizons palpable)
once gluttonous at the old dug
he now digests the hard landscape

(difficult meal
constipated memory always pushing
at the same deadbrown sum
the desire for vacuity
grinding at the base of the spine)

while his spirit
released into the vast air over this country seas where time
not reckoned from wave to wave
is unaccountably strange

16 September 1972